Chapter 6: Lily

What did she just see?

For a moment she caught a flash of somewhere else completely. A dark hallway? She didn't understand why but she was terrified, and then she heard a loud scuffle, followed by a high-pitched horrible screaming. She was scared and heartbroken and she wanted to help but fear left her frozen in place. A boy? An oddly familiar boy. She concentrated on the shadowy lump in the corner. Yup, no question about it, that tiny heap was definitely a younger version of her friend, Severus.

Before she had a chance to do or say anything the scene melted away as suddenly as it came on, and she was back in the wood, standing with the more current model of Severus Snape. She gasped as though she had forgotten how to breathe, gulping in the air she didn't know she needed.

As she recovered from the shock and the loss of oxygen, something in her brain just clicked. What she saw came from Severus, like that day on the playground. She was seeing something traumatic, and judging by his reaction he really didn't know he was doing it. What triggered this? They were talking about...his parents? His dad was normal, but wasn't "exactly" normal…

"N-nothing they just argue a lot."

Argue indeed. That could have been classified as the understatement of the century. If that was just an argument she saw then she was the next Prime Minister. It was all starting to make sense now, how he didn't seem to want to go home yesterday, why she could remember seeing him around town before. Always alone. Always creeping. No place to be. Was this the reason why? She had to find out for sure. She needed to know whether or not what she thought she saw was indeed what she assumed it was.

"Are you Ok?"

Severus's voice brought her crashing back to reality. She realized she hadn't moved much in the last couple minutes and it was probably looking very worrisome for him. She had to say something.

"I-I think so," her voice shook more than she had intended, but she didn't have time to worry about that. She needed the truth. "Is that why you're out all the time? Why you don't want to go home?"

"What? Who said I don't want to go home?"

If she thought her voice sounded shaky it was nothing compared to what Severus's sounded like now. She watched as he backed up a step or two, clearly anxious. She was obviously on to something. Her eyes narrowed as she examined him, willing him to spit it out. To just admit it.

Lily approached him. If he thought he could lie to her face than he would really have to lie to her face. She advanced until she was standing directly in front of him. No place to go, she thought. Her hands were hiked high on her hips as she peered directly into those fierce black eyes of his, she could almost count the eyelashes. "I don't think you hide it as well as you think you do Severus."

A soft breeze blew in, and rustled his long black hair. She was so close to him, she could smell it. His hair smelled like...well, like hair if she was being honest. Like it hadn't been washed in days. Not a bad smell really, but not entirely pleasant either, and there was something else. She caught an undertone of...metal? No, wait-

"I smell blood. Why do I smell blood?"

Severus's pupils constricted. His hand whipped to the back of his head and started feeling around. When he pulled it away again, there was a mixture of paper thin red flakes and a fine smear of fresh blood. Like a scab had been peeled away just to start bleeding again. She thought he looked genuinely surprised by the discovery.

"How did that happen?" Lily asked suspiciously. "What happened Sev?" she sounded slightly accusing and it must have registered with Severus because she thought he looked bothered by her interrogation.

"I don't know," he said attempting to wipe the evidence from his fingertips. "It must have happened when we were building the fort."

Lies.

"I didn't see you bump your head," Lily interjected. "I was there the whole time."

"Please-" Severus scoffed. "It's not like we were glued to each other that entire time. I ain't gotta-" Severus stopped and swallowed. "I don't need to answer to you."

He was getting angry. Maybe she should stop, she didn't want to lose him as a friend but at the same time she was so close to finding out the truth about Severus Snape. She needed to figure out her next course of action. Fast.

Lily backed up a step, letting her shoulders slump forward and releasing the hold on her hips. She looked at the ground as she thought about what she should say next.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I didn't mean to make you angry. You're right. It's not like I had my eye on you every minute. I just figured if you hit your head hard enough to bleed, you may have mentioned it to me." She looked up at him apologetically and offered a timid smile.

"I have to go," Severus replied hastily. He turned his back on Lily and started towards his frequent trail. Lily felt the sharp edges of panic begin to settle in her stomach. Her arm shot out automatically, grasping the sleeve of Severus's coat, urging him to stay put. He half-turned towards her to meet her pleading eyes.

"Wait! You're not angry are you? When can I see you again?" She hoped that didn't sound as pathetic as she thought it did, but she was desperate not to let him leave on a sour note. Severus seemed to deliberate with himself as he examined the girl in front of him. She felt him relax a little beneath her touch and he offered up one of those awkward half-smiles.

"Not angry," he supplied shortly. "Just need to get home before it gets dark or I'll get in trouble. See you here tomorrow?"

Lily nodded once in agreement. She reluctantly let go of Severus's long, fat-buttoned sleeve and watched as he disappeared back the way he had come. She was still a bit nervous that she had gone too far, and that Severus was hiding that he was still upset with her, but the temptation had been terrible. She had been so close!

Her desire to find out if she was right hadn't lifted at all, even if she did feel guilty about crossing the line with Severus. If she could somehow prove that she was right about her speculation without Severus being any the wiser- well it would be worth it, wouldn't it? Maybe then she would be able to do something about it. Isn't that in and of itself going to be worth the risk?

Lily continued to stare at the spot where Severus disappeared. How could she verify that what she saw in that vision was of Severus and his parents? She did promise herself to do some digging didn't she? Maybe this was her chance. If she followed him-

"That's pretty dangerous," her thoughts interjected.

Yes, but if she followed him, maybe she could see the house for herself. If she got close enough to peer inside, maybe she could recognize the hallway and verify her suspicions, then she could figure out how to help him.

"You're barking," she thought anxiously.

"Yup," she replied.

With her mind made up, she marched purposefully in the direction Severus had gone. She didn't make it far when she realized that she had no idea where she was going. She spent so much bloody time deciding what to do that she let him get away, and now she had no clue how to follow him. She frowned, unsure of what to do. She needed to regroup.

Lily turned around and headed back towards the clearing. Her feet carried her to Pine Peak without even thinking about it. She plopped down on her back with her head jutting out passed the shortest wall so she could see the trees. She was losing time. What she needed was a new plan.

Her eye caught something moving in the canopy. Probably just another Bowtruckle, she thought. They were quite fascinating. They were the first magical being that she got to see in real life and she wasn't even at Hogwarts yet. She smiled as she watched the far off movement, imagining what they could be up to and how they had never been discovered before by "normal" people- Muggles-

-Bowtruckles! Pine Peak! She bolted upright. Didn't Severus say that Bowtruckles only lived in trees that had wood of wand quality? Her heart began to race. She wasn't ready to give up just yet. Lily stood up and began to frantically search the trunks of the two pines, circling them like a shark. She found what she was looking for almost immediately. Snapping off a very thin twig from one of the pine trees she raced back down the hidden trail. She just really hoped this worked.

She held the twig flat in her palm and started to think about what she wanted. She wanted to find Severus Snape. She needed Severus. Please, show me Severus. She tried to pour all of her emotions into it, expressing her desperate desire to know, to help. She thought about the vision she had earlier, all the emotions she felt in that moment. 'Please - please - please'

She felt something. The twig had lifted up the tiniest bit, as though it weighed nothing at all and merely rested on top of her skin by some invisible magnetic field. It turned slowly and then stopped, one end pointing directly up the unknown trail. Her heart felt like it could hammer right through her chest, as adrenaline pounded it's way through her body.

Cautiously she started walking forward, keeping an eye on the twig that practically floated against her palm. Eventually the twig started to veer towards the left. Taking a wild stab in the dark, Lily started walking at an angle towards her left, and sure enough the twig started to level off until it was once again pointing straight ahead.

Brilliant!

She carried on like that for awhile, trudging through the tall grass and the underbrush, periodically checking on the twig to make sure she was going in the right direction. The further she went on the more anxious she felt. She knew that what she was doing was extremely high-risk, and the reality of it weighed on her more and more with each forward step.

Finally, the trees thinned and she could see the threshold of the forest. She felt as though she could have swallowed her heart. She crouched down low, tucking the twig carefully into her back pocket as she did. Was this the place? She couldn't know for sure because she couldn't risk trying to use the twig while she was sneaking around back here. She didn't know why or how but she had a strong feeling she had come to her destination. The Snape house.

She dove behind one of the larger trees and peered around it, taking in the view before her. The house she had come to was very small and run-down. It looked like it could only hold a few rooms. Like an apartment if it was turned into a tiny stand-alone cottage, which sounded ridiculous but she didn't know how else to describe it. She hated to admit it, but there was a chance that Petunia was right about them sleeping in a single room. There was a rusty looking blue truck in the driveway, that was all peeling paint and rusty bolts. Judging from the way the weeds grew around it, it looked like it hadn't been moved in a while.

Her persistent scan uncovered what she had been searching for. A window. Her heart leaped with excitement at discovering it, bringing her one step closer to her goal, but in another instant left it sinking back down into the pit of her stomach. In order to get to the window, she would need to be out in the open, fully exposed and vulnerable to any wandering eyes. What if a neighbor saw her? Surely they wouldn't stand by and let it happen. Worse yet, what if someone left the house and she was caught red-handed? Shit.

Lily pinched her bottom lip between her teeth as she thought of a game plan. There were some scant looking bushes by the front porch. Good for cover but bad for accessibility, as the window was located on the side of the house. Useless. If she could somehow scale the distance between her hiding place and the yard without being seen, then the sill and the distance between the height of the window would offer her immunity from the people inside the house, but not from outside the house. It was looking grim, but she had to do what she came to do. She'd already come this far-

She took a couple deep steadying breaths as she braced herself to take the plunge. This was probably by far the stupidest idea she's ever had, and that included the time she convinced Petunia that her spaghetti was actually a kind of worm that come from dog butts causing her to vomit violently into her lap. She whipped around ready to spring from behind the tree, when she heard a loud noise coming up the street that had her nose-diving to the ground instead, belly crawling back to her original position. She lay completely frozen, as she peered through the gaps in the foliage.

Shit, she didn't have time for this. The sun was already getting ready to set and she still had to make it home. She didn't want to find her way through the woods in the dark, no matter how "small" they were. Already the sky was painted a bright orange. She waited as the noise steadily grew louder.

"NAA-NAA-NAA NA NA-NA-NAAAA HEY JUUUDE"

Lily didn't like the way the voice sounded. Not one bit. It was loud and obnoxious, and though she didn't know why, it scared her. The owner of the voice was clearly intoxicated. She continued to watch the sidewalk without moving an inch, for fear any movement might give her away. Eventually, a tall, thick man came stumbling into view. He had dark hair and a heavy brow that was made more prominent by his receding hairline. His jaw was big and square and he had large beefy arms.

The man was laughing gruffly after his serenade. "Hey Jude-" he sung more quietly as though to himself. He stopped...right in front of the yard. Lily was terrified he somehow saw her, and she held her breath, squeezing her eyes shut, waiting for the inevitable confrontation.

When it never came, she scrounged up the courage to open her eyes again. It took her a brief moment to relocate him, but she saw the man on his hands and knees in the grass. It looked as though he was inspecting it carefully and by the looks of things, whatever he found there did not make him happy.

The man's eyes turned to dangerous slits and his mouth twisted into a deep grimace as he turned to look towards the small house, his eyes burning with rage. He staggered to his feet and like a man on a mission he stormed the front door. Lily wondered what he could have seen in the grass that made him so angry. She swiveled to try and see what he was looking at. She couldn't see much of anything, there was a possibility there was a small scuff in the dirt. It looked like maybe...maybe some grass was missing in the area the man inspected...

"Where's the boy Eileen?" the man thundered from inside the house.

Lily couldn't make out all that was being said, it was muffled and distorted, but she heard a woman's voice protesting loudly. There were a few loud clangs from inside and her fear deepened substantially. Lily was shaking from head to toe with both horror and adrenaline, but she didn't dare move. She couldn't think. What had she gotten herself into?

A few moments later the man reappeared and he was holding something...or rather someone, by the scruff of the neck, dragging him out into the yard. A woman emerged seconds later, screaming herself hoarse.

Oh God, Severus!

Lily looked on, frozen in terror, as Severus begged and screamed apologies, wanting to look away but unable to, as the man threw Severus to the ground roughly. Severus tried to get up, but the man grabbed a fistful of his long black hair and shoved his face an inch or so above the ground. It was like watching a dog get punished by forcing its nose into its own mess after its piddled on the carpet. It was horrible. Lily choked back the tears that suddenly overwhelmed her. The woman was still screaming, hitting every inch of the man she could reach with her fists.

"Tobi, let him alone! Let 'im be! Please! Please!"

"Christ Eileen! Shut the fuck up!" the man roared. "He needs to be taught a lesson! Look at what he done to the yard! I won' have you makin' excuses for im'! A man pays what he owes!"

"Tobi, No! Please! Let's go back inside! Tobi, Stop!"

"Now listen here boy. You done made a mess of this here yard, and I dun stand for it! You need to have some goddamn respect for your da! I'm the one who keeps you clothed, I'm the one who gives you a goddamn roof over yer greasy lil' head! You don' disrespect me by tearin' up my property, ya hear?"

The more the man shouted the closer he pushed his son's face to the ground until his cheek was shoved painfully into the dirt. Severus was crying and screaming out more apologies that only landed on deaf ears, it looked as though he were inhaling clouds of dirt that were being kicked up by his breath and he spluttered and gagged around his words as he struggled to get free.

"Oh God, please make it stop," Lily thought frantically. Tears were spilling down her cheeks now.

"Tobi! That's enough! Let him up!" the woman begged. The man turned around and stared her down, still holding the boy's face into the ground. With one more angry shove, he let go of Severus. He considered both of them a moment, his lip curling, before lumbering his way back into the house without saying another word. And just like that, it was over.

Lily lay trembling all over, the tears still spilling quietly down her cheeks as she held her position. She had never witnessed anything so mortifying in her life. She had wanted to do something, but she couldn't. She physically couldn't. She froze. Choked. She should have thrown herself at the man. Hit him. Hurt him. Severus was her friend. She should have saved him.

It all made sense now, as much as she wished it didn't. She didn't need to look through the window to know that what she saw in the vision earlier that day was indeed what she thought it was. It was all that and so much worse.

Lily's body was beginning to ache from remaining stagnant for so long, but she refused to shift, ignoring the pain in her limbs. She could not be discovered. If Severus knew what she'd seen, he'd probably never speak to her again. She bit her tongue hard so she could focus on the pain in her mouth rather than the ache that coursed through the rest of her body.

She watched Severus get to his feet and brush himself off. For one heart-stopping moment she thought he was looking directly at her. That she had been caught. But she soon realized that he was gazing passed her and into the wood. He spit several times into the ground, wiping his mouth on the back of his sleeve. He walked over to his mother, and knelt down next to her. She threw her arms around him, sobbing, and eventually Lily watched the pair of them disappear into the tiny house once more.

Everything was still and quiet. It was as though the street and everyone on it remained as ignorant as ever. As though what she just witnessed in the Snape family yard couldn't have been any more ordinary; or worse, like it never happened at all. It was a trick. An illusion. She was delirious, she must have been seeing things. But even as she attempted to calm herself, she noticed the small scuff in the grass, made larger by Severus' bony cheek, and the reality came flooding back to her.

She felt numb.

She didn't know how long she continued to lay there, afraid that if she moved now she would be discovered, but the sun was mostly gone, leaving nothing but the orange streaked horizon in its wake. She would be in big trouble if she didn't get moving. She had to get home. Her parents were going to kill her-

The weight of that statement left her chilled.

"It's just an expression," she thought desperately. "Haha of course it is, nobody's parents would actually- could really-"

She took a deep breath, forcing back more tears. She had to go. Now. She carefully tried lifting her stiff legs from the grass, then her arms and now her neck. Slowly regaining the feel of her body and willing everything to spark back to life. She managed to raise herself up onto her forearms and, though she was still terrified, she used them to propel herself forward into a thicker part of the wood and out of sight.

Once she felt she had put enough distance between herself and the tiny house, she got to her feet. Her clothes were dirty from crawling on her stomach, and she was soaked with sweat and tears. Absentmindedly, she attempted to brush some of the dirt from her clothes, but gave it up as a bad job. Clothes can be washed, she thought. Unlike-

She looked up at the sky. It was fairly dark out now. The sun had disappeared with just the faintest blue glint still lingering. She was definitely going to be home late. How was she going to navigate her way back in the dark? She frowned as she pulled out the little twig from her back pocket. It lay in her palm, as dead and ordinary as if she picked it up from her backyard. She tried to will it back to life as she had done before, but it remained quite still and unresponsive. Lily found she couldn't even drum up the energy to care.

She stuck the twig back into her pocket and started walking anyway, she was pretty sure she could remember the way back to Pine Peak.

Poor Severus. How could people like that exist in the world? She had always thought that people were generally good-natured and the world was full of kindness and beauty. She always liked to believe the best in people. But what she saw that man-

...Father...he was Sev's father…

-do to his own child had her questioning everything she thought she believed in. The longer she thought about it, the more she hated him. It had her searching through the very darkest recesses of her mind. One she didn't even know she possessed, or would have thought herself capable of. She thought that if the world was so unjust, perhaps it was time for her to balance the scales and take matters into her own hands. Maybe sometimes, you needed to make your own justice.

It took her awhile to realize that as she walked, her path seemed to take it on itself to light her way. Literally. She was walking a path that was illuminated by a soft, eerie blue glow. It shed just enough light for her to see directly in front of her, but it always stayed ahead by a few feet, as though guiding her way. The light flickered forward onto rocks and weeds and fallen branches. It was like they were illuminated from the inside out, as though it had always been in their nature to glow when little girls walked passed them in the dark.

It was oddly unsettling, but Lily was too emotionally drained to think on it much. She continued to trudge on, like a zombie, her feet continuing to carry her forward as though disconnected from both mind and body. When she looked up again, she was at her front door.

Inside, she was mildly surprised, but on the outside, her face remained stoic and gave way to no emotion. She watched her hand twist the latch on the door as though through the lens of a camera, her arm drifting through space and lost in a dream.

"Lily! Is that you?" Mrs. Evans called frantically from the kitchen.

Before she had a chance to register who was speaking to her, her mother wrapped her in a bone-breaking embrace. "Andrew!"

Mr. Evans came barreling to the door and as soon as Mrs. Evans had released their youngest daughter, he knelt down and hugged her urgently. "Where have you been!?" he demanded holding her at arms length. "Your mother and I have been so worried!" he scolded, his strong hands shaking her gently for emphasis.

Lily cracked.

Her breath came and went in heavy bursts that felt like they were trying to actually break through her lungs and her eyes filled with tears.

"Mum? Dad?" she croaked quietly. Unshed tears started pouring themselves down her cheeks.

"Lily? What's wrong? Are you hurt?" Mrs Evans asked, fear creeping into her tone. Lily shook her head and started wailing, collapsing into her mother's arms and sobbing into her shoulder. "Lily, shhh you're alright now, I've got you. There, there" Mrs. Evans soothed, stroking Lily's hair. "Andrew-"

"I'll put the kettle on," Mr. Evans said, quickly getting up and disappearing into the kitchen.

Mrs. Evans continued to rock Lily gently in her arms, stroking her back and murmuring soft words of comfort under her breath, waiting patiently for Lily to calm down enough that she was able to speak. Finally, Lily's ragged breathing began to steady and she swallowed, attempting to clear her depleted airway.

"Mummy?" She breathed, her voice threatening to break. Mrs. Evans hummed in response. "What do I do if someone is in trouble?" The question seemed to alarm Mrs. Evans and she pulled back to look into her daughter's tear-streaked face.

"Lily? What is this? Who's in trouble?"

Lily Shook her head sadly. "We should try and help them shouldn't we? If someone we know is in trouble, we should help."

"Lily, what-"

But Lily burst into tears again, wrapping her arms around her mother's neck, sobbing. Mrs. Evans looked passed her daughter and exchanged a worried glance with her husband, who stood patiently in the doorway with a cup of hot chocolate in his hands. His concern was deeply etched in the lines of his face and he shrugged his shoulders helplessly in return.

Among all the excitement of the evening and Lily's hysterics, nobody noticed the young girl standing at the bottom of the stairs, in her matching housecoat and slippers, her blonde hair in disarray. Nobody noticed Petunia Evans standing with her head cocked to the door and a sneer on her lips.

A/N: Consider this chapter a peace offering :D Since I'm going to be going away for a few weeks for my wedding (without knowing how much I'll be able to write) I tried to pump out this chapter quickly for you all. I hope you enjoyed it. Leave me some encouraging words, or reviews if you liked what you read and thanks for reading! :3

*Minor Re-editing*